dots-menu
×

Home  »  Complete Poetical Works by Alexander Pope  »  On Edmund, Duke of Buckingham

Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Complete Poetical Works. 1903.

Epitaphs

On Edmund, Duke of Buckingham

Who Died in the Nineteenth Year of His Age, 1735

IF modest Youth, with cool Reflection crown’d,

And ev’ry opening Virtue blooming round,

Could save a Parent’s justest Pride from fate,

Or add one Patriot to a sinking state,

This weeping marble had not ask’d thy tear,

Or sadly told, how many hopes lie here!

The living Virtue now had shone approv’d;

The Senate heard him, and his country lov’d.

Yet softer honours and less noisy fame

Attend the shade of gentle BUCKINGHAM:

In whom a race, for Courage famed and Art,

Ends in the milder merit of the Heart;

And, Chiefs or Sages long to Britain giv’n,

Pays the last tribute of a Saint to Heav’n.